Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Cuttlefish Cargo Cult Day 1: Here's to the Cuttlefish!

The dive happened a
week and a half before we left Australia, when I was in a rather busy period of
my life. I have always intended to talk
about it, because that day dive was, if anything, even more extra-ordinary than
the first dive: the sun was
shining and the water was clear and there were exponentially more cuttlefish
out and about than when Dr Tabubil and I went diving- but what with the move, and then one thing
and then another, the photos have been languishing on my desktop for the past
year and I haven’t found the moment.

And then a couple of
weeks ago, Australian friends sent news that made my cuttlefish images very
topical indeed.

For those who aren't
aware, the Australian Giant Cuttlefish is the largest cuttlefish species in the
world - up to a meter across, and the coast of the Spencer Gulf in South
Australia, where I lived, is a place very special to these animals.

Those unfamiliar
might read my post HERE and
explore its own attendant links, or if you're in a hurry, you might just read
this quick summary. And then go look up
the BBC documentary series 'LIFE' (2009) and check out the episode 'Creatures
of the Deep.' (after which you will want
to go read the post linked above anyway, because the giant cuttlefish so entirely fascinating).

The nutshell:

The Australian Giant
Cuttlefish is the largest cuttlefish species on earth. They lead a solitary,
leave-me-alone-and-to-hell-with-the-neighbors sort of life, but once a year,
they come by the thousands to breed along a very small and very specific
stretch of the coast along the upper Spencer Gulf in Southern Australia.

Point Lowly, this little stretch
of coast, is the world's only known mass cuttlefish spawning ground. Just outside the coastal mining town of
Whyalla, the sandy floor of the gulf gives way to a litter of sandstone slabs,
built up with ledges and overhangs under which the cuttlefish can lay and leave
their eggs.

When they have
finished breeding they disappear. We
have no idea where they go or what they do – all we know of them we know from
this brief annual window of time and breeding behavior, and when they leave
they vanish out of science and out of human knowledge.

Because of the scale
of this breeding event, the Australian Giant Cuttlefish is a species that lives
in a tenuous equilibrium. An event that
disrupted the breeding colony would have a huge effect on the viability of the
whole species.

When I left
Australia, there were two threats to the cuttlefish.

Threat the first:

A large Australian multinational firm (BHP
Billiton) wished to build a desalination plant for their inland mining
operations, and they had chosen this same specific piece of coast to build it
on. The scientific reports are
inconclusive to hypothetically optimistic – there is no direct evidence to
indicate that an upsurge of salinity in the local region would affect the
breeding grounds.

BUT:

The local geology of
the breeding site holds nothing special for the desal plant. A few kilometers in either direction across
hundreds of kilometers of gulf coastline would have made no difference either
way to the economics or feasibility of the plan. When you are building around a species so
special, so evanescent and so terribly unknown, in what sort of human universe
would you want to take that risk?

Local landowning
interests had played NIMBY and refused to give up any of their sheep pastures,
and the state-owned land that is this very special breeding ground seems to
have been the only piece of coast that did not have someone in government
willing to stand up for it. Shame on
South Australia. When I left, the
proposal was still, slightly, on the fence; the people of the gulf coast cared
– even if their elected representatives didn’t, and there was some tenuous
hope.

Threat the second:

When Dr Tabubil and
I made our first dive last year, Tony's dive shop was a busy place:
on his sofa was a pair of Japanese documentary film-makers (if anyone
knows who they were filming for or how to find the footage that they took,
please let me know. I’d love to see it)
and at the back of the dive-shop, drinking coffee and talking in low,
frustrated tones, was a team of bemused biologists and marine scientists. The cuttlefish numbers were low that year –
very low. The winter drop in water
temperature had happened more slowly than usual, and the cuttlefish had been
coming late and slowly. And when they came, they had been much
smaller than the average. The scientists
watched, futilely, and took censuses, and waited to see what would happen. And
wondered why the cuttlefish that came were so small.

That was 2011. In June of 2012, two things happened. BHP Billion
won. The desalination plant is going
ahead. Huzzah for Big
Businesses. Huzzah.

But it may not
matter one way or the other. This year,
the cuttlefish did notcome back. The
numbers at the breeding ground were low last year, but nothing like low enough
to affect species viability. The water
conditions at the breeding ground have not changed. Whatever has happened happened out wherever
the cuttlefish go when they do go, and it happened extremely enough that within
two years, an entire submarine ecosystem may be gone forever.

And so, in a spirit
of cargo cults and magical thinking, we’re going to have a week or so of
cuttlefish: perhaps, if we wish hard
enough, a critical concentration of photo and video will bring them back from
wherever they have gone.

Given a large enough set of universes, nothing
is impossible. They’re curious
creatures, cuttlefish. Look at this one
here – he found me, a long, dark-blue-neoprene-and aluminum-tank thing,
floating a foot or so above the surface, and was moved enough not to run but to
swim over to me and investigate. He came on and on and would have snatched the
camera from my hands if I had let him.

About Me

I am an Australian architect, married to a Canadian who followed me home.
In September 2011 we relocated from rural South Australia to the bustling metropolis of Santiago, Chile, where it's warmer than Canada, but less insect-y than Australia.
How's that for a compromise?